Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
Behind Barbed Wire: A German POW in Canada
678 Plays1 year ago
Wilhelm Rahn was a 19-year-old German naval ensign when his U-boat was torpedoed by a British submarine off the coast of Corsica in 1943. Plucked from the water by the submarine's helmsman, he ended up in a POW camp in the backwoods of Canada. Join Rahn's grandson Sebastian Koester and historical researcher Bernard Wood for a discussion of life in a Second World War Canadian prisoner of war camp.
Sound credits: Claude Debussy, “Dialogue du vent et de la mer,” performed by US Air Force band, licensed under creative commons: https://musopen.org/music/14381-la-mer/
Scream “Hilfe!” made by Phantastonia, licensed under creative commons attribution license: https://freesound.org/people/phantastonia/sounds/615018/
Scream, licensed under creative commons: https://freesound.org/people/RutgerMuller/sounds/104030/
Waves, North Sea, licensed under creative commons: https://freesound.org/people/inchadney/sounds/129454/
Theme music, “Red River Jig,” from the album Métis Fiddling for Dancing, performed by Alex Kusturok, licensed from the artist.
Recommended
Transcript
Surviving the U-301 Sinking
00:00:04
Speaker
There are beautiful and less beautiful dreams. I thought I was dreaming a less beautiful one. Saw myself in the dream, swimming in the water of a turbulent sea, when suddenly a desperate cry for help tore me out of the dream. And I knew in a flash that I really was lying in the water and not in my bunk in the Sargent's quarter of submarine U-301.
00:00:35
Speaker
A screaming figure swept past me, I saw it as if through a veil. The scream went silent, and then I was alone in the waste-ness of the sea, alone with the fear of the unknown, the fear of death.
00:00:55
Speaker
Wilhelm Rahn was a 19-year-old ensign in the German Navy when his U-boat was torpedoed by a British submarine off the coast of Corsica in 1943. Rahn was plucked from the water by the helmsman of the submarine, the only survivor of U-boat 301. He was sent to a prisoner of war camp near Petawawa, Ontario.
00:01:18
Speaker
How did his time in the camp change his beliefs about Nazi Germany? And what do his memoirs tell us about the POW experience in Canada? This is Stories Behind the History. Welcome to Stories Behind the History.
00:01:41
Speaker
I'm Kate Chaimette, Senior Editor of Canada's History Magazine. In this podcast, I speak with leading historians and witnesses to history to discover the people and events that shaped our nation.
Introduction to Guests and Podcast
00:01:52
Speaker
Today, I'm speaking with Bernard Wood, who wrote the article Prisoner of Camp 33 for Canada's History Magazine. Bernard, welcome to the podcast. Thank you very much.
00:02:03
Speaker
And I'm also pleased to have as a special guest today, Wilhelm Rahn's grandson, Sebastian Kusta. Sebastian, welcome to the podcast. Glad to be here, Kate. Sebastian, you're joining us from Berlin, is that right? That's right.
00:02:18
Speaker
So it's great to have you and I appreciate you coming on the podcast. So the story in Canada's History Magazine is about your grandfather and you posted his memoirs online, which is really interesting. And that's how Bernard discovered him. So I'm just wondering, Sebastian, could you start us off by just telling us a little bit about your grandfather and the memoirs that he wrote?
Rahn's Personality and Hobbies
00:02:42
Speaker
My grandfather at
00:02:46
Speaker
Yeah, a great sense of humor. First of all, he played bridge. He learned that in the camp and he was a fan of the game scout. The thing with him playing scout was that he was a cheater. He cheated very often and was very satisfied.
00:03:14
Speaker
when people found out. So yeah, that was also him. And did he used to tell you stories about his wartime experiences? We never talked about it, no. So how did you discover his memoirs? How did you find out about his experiences?
Preserving Rahn's Memoirs and Ideological Beliefs
00:03:36
Speaker
I
00:03:37
Speaker
found out from my grandmother, she talked about it and showed me the what you wrote down. And then after he passed away, I decided to roll it up and put it to the internet. Yeah. Hmm.
00:04:02
Speaker
So I should tell our listeners a little bit about these memoirs. So these were memoirs of his experiences that he had in the Second World War and in the POW camps in Canada, originally in Petawawa and then later near Lethbridge, Alberta. Is that right? That's right, yeah. Yeah. And what made you decide then to share those memoirs on the internet?
00:04:29
Speaker
I wanted that the world gets to know him and that he won't be forgotten. That was my intention.
00:04:41
Speaker
It's interesting because one thing that struck me as he mentions in his memoirs that he had been in the Hitler youth and he had been, you know, like he's not ashamed to say in his memoirs that when he was young, he did believe in the Nazi ideology. How did that make you feel when you discovered that? And also did that sort of make you hesitate about posting the memoirs for the public?
00:05:08
Speaker
Yeah, the thing is everyone was in the Taïus by that time when Hitler became the Chancellor.
00:05:20
Speaker
was, was also in preparation to be a soldier. But he had also the fun part, the holiday camps and all that. But yeah, I can't tell what what he would say about it. He never
00:05:50
Speaker
I read Kate one statistic from a very, very reliable source that said in 1939, the beginning of the war, 82% of young Germans were either in the Hitler Youth or the young German girls, which was the female equivalent. So, you know, more recently, there's been that popular film Jojo Rabbit, which showed a little bit what
00:06:17
Speaker
how all the pressures of the whole society pushed on the children. Yeah, Bernadine, maybe you could talk a bit about that. I want to bring you into the conversation because when you came across Wilhelm Rand's diary on the internet, you were already researching, I believe, German POWs
Memoirs' Impact on POW Research
00:06:36
Speaker
in Canada. Is that right? Is that how you came across the diary originally?
00:06:41
Speaker
Yeah, I've been working on a book about Petawawa in Canada, actually the story of Canada through the lens of Petawawa. And this was one of the little known chapters was the fact that there was a prisoner of war camp there. And in fact, there'd been an internee camp before that.
00:06:57
Speaker
So i had studied it quite carefully you know from all the official documents in the archives and a couple of academic theses and so on. I really had a respectable chapter drawn up about that camp but what i was dying to find was some kind of testimony from a president who actually been there even the guards didn't write very much speak very much about it.
00:07:22
Speaker
And because I could read German, I was scanning the internet in hopes that I would find something. And then, lo and behold, in a real eureka moment for a researcher, one day I came across Sebastian's post, and it was just prisoner of war and his number.
00:07:44
Speaker
So I started scanning this and immediately I recognized this name because it had been in the archives, the military archives here, on an escape attempt from Petawawa. So I thought, wow, and then I started reading it. And it's, as Sebastian said, I fell in love with this guy because he has such a lovely sense of humor.
00:08:08
Speaker
And, you know, you keep reminding yourself he was a kid, he was 19. But writing, you know, with the perspective of his later life, very, very engaging account and down to earth, but also thoughtful.
Life in a POW Camp
00:08:29
Speaker
Yeah, so for our readers who haven't all read, or our listeners, I should say, who haven't all read the article, Sebastian, maybe tell us a little bit about your grandfather's experiences in the POW camp and maybe that escape attempt and some of the things that he experienced and that happened to him in that camp. Can you give us a picture?
00:08:52
Speaker
Yeah, he was allowed to go out of the camp to, how can I say it? Smash the timber. To cut the trees down. He cut the trees down. And yeah, he enjoyed it so much that I could watch him smash the trees.
00:09:21
Speaker
for fun. When we were in Denmark or in our weekend cottage, we always cut the tree when he had time and I thought, wow, that's my grandfather.
00:09:40
Speaker
I'm impressed. He wanted to be a lumberjack after he came back. He even had the clothes. He wore like lumberjack clothes, like plaid shirts and things.
00:10:01
Speaker
That's so funny. And he tried to escape. Tell us a little bit about this escape attempt that he was actually almost somewhat successful, right? Almost. But the guards always told the prisoners
00:10:20
Speaker
You don't escape, you don't escape, then you hit the trees. You have to escape when you're in the prison and fight your way through. But when you cut the trees, you are not allowed to escape, otherwise you will be punished.
00:10:44
Speaker
I think it was the German authorities in the camp as well, Sebastian, who told the prisoners that they should not escape while they were out on the work camps, because then the Canadians would withdraw their privileges and they wouldn't get the pay that they were getting for being lumberjacks. So they were forced to, as you say, to make the escape from the camp itself.
00:11:10
Speaker
So the story that I read Bernard from you is they had these other prisoners create a distraction and then Wilhelm Rahn and his body cut through this fence and then they tried to run out through the woods. And now Sebastian pick it up from here because he
00:11:28
Speaker
was actually trying to pretend or pass himself off as a lumberjack, right? He thought people would believe that he was just a stray lumberjack wandering the woods and not an escaped German prisoner, right? Yes. And how did that work out? How did the escape attempt end? He got as far as the railway.
00:11:58
Speaker
Then he ran into some railway workers who were not fooled by his impersonation of a Canadian lumberjack. Not too surprisingly. Bernard, I want to circle back to this idea about the Nazi indoctrination.
Ideological Indoctrination and Canadian Reformation
00:12:18
Speaker
Wilhelm Rahn was 19 years old, so it's again quite young.
00:12:24
Speaker
Bernard, I think you mentioned to me before the podcast that you had actually interviewed some other people about this Nazi indoctrination of young people. Could you give us some insights into that? Because when we talk like Sebastian, when you're talking about your grandfather,
00:12:39
Speaker
I don't think he fits this idea we have of what a Nazi would have been, like some very nasty, evil person. He doesn't seem like that kind of person at all. So Bernard, can you tell us a little bit about how was it that these young men got indoctrinated into these ideas? Well, you know, we all know that the broad history, but I did see one interview on a documentary, a former prisoner returned to Alberta.
00:13:09
Speaker
who described it. And, you know, Wilhelm Rahn says at one point in his memoir, you know, what could you expect from a 19-year-old back then? He doesn't go into much more detail, but this former prisoner said, you know, what we were taught about German history began with the defeat in the First World War.
00:13:30
Speaker
It was all about the humiliation of the country, the loss of territory, the crippling reparation payments we had to make, the forced disarmament. And then that was followed by the hyperinflation and the chaos of the Weimar Republic. He says, against all that, Hitler was painted as the savior of Germany. And that was that was all we could see. And you know, recently it struck me
00:14:00
Speaker
that you can see now even in a much different situation, the power of disinformation, the hold it can have on people's minds. And if you try and visualize this for the whole society, so rigidly enforced, you understand how much, in a sense, deprogramming had to happen.
00:14:22
Speaker
And I thought the Canadian strategy was another thing that I learned about in doing this research, to say, you know, we've got to try and bring these people around by treating them well, rather than just the kind of brutality they expect from us.
00:14:40
Speaker
In the camps, you mean. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Sebastian, maybe you could tell us a little bit about that. Based on your grandfather's memoirs, what was the relationship between the prisoners and then the guards and the Canadians in the camps?
Changing Perspectives on Nazi Ideology
00:14:56
Speaker
What sense did you get of that? I heard he was treated very well by them.
00:15:07
Speaker
always had something to eat and made friends there and there was not a problem for him. And was that typical Bernard from your research of the POW experience in Canada?
00:15:24
Speaker
Oh, no question that they were well treated. In fact, there was even a little bit of concern in some of the areas where the camps were that the prisoners were being treated better than the civilian population during the war, because there was rationing and so on. But they were extremely well fed. They had exercise facilities, depending on the size of the camp and so on. As Sebastian said, they had the opportunity to do some outdoor work.
00:15:52
Speaker
And of course, things were so tough at home or for Germans on the front that they felt they were very privileged. And even in the bigger camps particularly, they were taking university courses. I saw the recollections of one POW who did all his studies basically through the University of Saskatchewan while he was in the camp in Alberta.
00:16:17
Speaker
He went back to Germany after the war and he said, well, I finished the top of my class within a year in my professional calling because of the chance we had to study. It was not lavish, but it was very comfortable by comparison
00:16:38
Speaker
with what they would have had otherwise, and they appreciate it. A thousand of the 35,000 actually re-immigrated to Canada after the war, so they clearly had liked it. I think 6,000 had expressed an interest in doing that.
00:16:55
Speaker
So you think that that was a strategy by the Canadians in order to sort of turn people away from this Nazi ideology, away from this idea that, you know, that Hitler was a savior and that that was the only way that they could exist as a people. It gave them a different way of looking at the world, do you think? I think it did. And it was gradual. And he records this, Wilhelm Rahn records this in his memoir that, you know, different
00:17:22
Speaker
pieces were falling into place that he knew firsthand because he was the only survivor from his U-boat when it was sunk.
00:17:30
Speaker
that the U-boat strategy was failing, and yet the government, Admiral Donitz, kept on sending these young sailors to death or imprisonment. But he was the only one of 49 on his U-boat who survived, badly wounded. So they knew that that was going wrong. And this was all after the first phases of the war where Germany had been winning on every front.
00:17:56
Speaker
But most of the prisoners in Canada came from North Africa after the North African campaign turned sour for Germany. So they were seeing the defeat, they were seeing that their leaders were not infallible, that their people were lied to, and the Canadians consciously gave them newspapers every day in each barracks, and Wilhelm Rahn was actually the translator in his barracks.
00:18:21
Speaker
for the stories, they would censor them sometimes, but clearly, you know, when things started going badly for the allies, they censored them a bit. But, you know, after they were initiated, oh, this is all propaganda. This is nonsense. They began to see there's a difference here. This is actually truthful information. So they began to see through the kind of lies that they've been fed. Hmm. Hmm.
00:18:45
Speaker
Sebastian, a part I really found gripping is the very beginning of the diary where he describes, I think he starts with, there are beautiful and less beautiful dreams. And then he talks about being pulled under when his U-boat is thinking or is torpedoed, right? Yeah. Yeah. I thought that was interesting. And I think you mentioned he still had like dreams and nightmares after
00:19:11
Speaker
Hmm. That's true. Were they nightmares of the drowning of the, of the sinking of the boat? I believe yes. He, he was still in his jacket. He has to rip it off. So he not drowned. That was, it was an intense part. Yeah. There was another one.
00:19:36
Speaker
He was trying to contact, but this man didn't make it, unfortunately. He was trying to save one of his shipmates. Yeah, or even yelling at him. This man didn't, this member of the crew didn't make it, yeah.
00:20:05
Speaker
Yeah, that must have been something again, like just a moment that you would never forget. And that he was rescued by a British submarine, a person on the British submarine, right? Yes. And I think you mentioned that they stayed in contact after the war with your grandfather and the person who had rescued him. Can you tell me a little bit about that, how they managed to stay in contact afterwards?
00:20:31
Speaker
Yeah, they wrote back and forth. And, you know, that's what I know. I believe he was, he was in Germany as a guest. But I'm not really sure. But they wrote each other after the war, yes.
00:20:54
Speaker
So I guess we should back up. So he goes to the POW camp in Petawawa. And then at the end of the war, he was transferred to a camp in Lethbridge, Alberta. And some of the POWs were sent home from the camp in Petawawa, but some were sent to Alberta. Let's just basically just touch on that a little bit. Why was he sent to Alberta? What was the purpose of that second POW camp?
00:21:21
Speaker
I could chime in on that if you like. Yeah, jump in Bernard. He says they sorted out the sheep and the goats at that point because the war was over and they were determined not to send unreformed Nazis back to Germany.
Transfer to Lethbridge and Confronting Truths
00:21:41
Speaker
The camp in Lethbridge was one of those camps where they began concentrating
00:21:48
Speaker
both hardliners, militarists, as he describes himself, and escapers, which he also was, so in a sense sort of troublemaker. But he said halfway across the long, long trip, the guards realized we were just a bunch of
00:22:05
Speaker
Silly young men like their own sons mostly they got to left bridge and there were a lot some real hardliners there and the big camps. The prisoners are a lot of very smart people they had built radios so they were in touch with germany they were getting instructions and in fact that there was a murder in in one of the camps in in in the alberta.
00:22:31
Speaker
because the people were, were defeatists. A couple of prisoners were saying, you know, we're going to lose and this has all been wrong and the Nazis were wrong. And they were actually murdered in the camp and the murderers were executed after the war.
00:22:45
Speaker
So that, it was a different kind of routine there. And even though the big camp, way, way bigger in Lethbridge than at Petawawa, had all kinds of great facilities as well, they began toughening up on the prisoners and saying, you know, you're going to, one, they showed them the films from the liberated death camps. And this was really a shocker for most of those soldiers who had no idea.
00:23:16
Speaker
Although once again the heart of the real hardliners were saying that's all propaganda that's all nonsense and so on but they also cut their rations. Things were not as nice and comfortable and the canadians consciously said to them you know you're not going to escape.
00:23:34
Speaker
knowing what it's like, the kind of conditions that were imposed in the camps in Germany, although nobody's going to starve here. And he says it made a difference. Initially, we laughed at them because they'd been so kind to us and we thought they weren't going to do this. And they did, in fact, crack down pretty hard.
00:23:53
Speaker
And he said that made a difference over time. And they began the process of sorting out people who were more inclined to democracy. There were study groups that were formed on democracy and so on. And by the time he left,
00:24:12
Speaker
He was he was more than halfway there in. And, you know, that was shown when he got back to Germany and became a policeman and eventually joined the army of the new West German democracy. So, Bernard, sorry, I'm curious about that. You were saying that some of the hard line prisoners in some of the other camps, so not Petawawa, but they actually built ham radios and were in touch with people in Germany, but they were inside the POW camps.
00:24:41
Speaker
Yep. There was one, I believe it was Lethbridge. I may be wrong because there were two camps, two big camps, at least in Alberta. And there was also another one in Bowmanville, Ontario, which was for officers. And there they were closely in touch and there was one escape attempt and a guy got as far as Nova Scotia, where he was supposed to rendezvous with a submarine. So they had been in that kind of communication. Wow. Yeah.
00:25:12
Speaker
That's incredible. I had no idea. I'd never heard that before.
00:25:18
Speaker
And did they manage, I know we're getting a bit far from Wilhelm Rahn's story and I'll come back to it, but I'm curious, did they manage to de-nazify those hardline Nazi people or did they eventually just have to sort of give up and say, the war's over, we have to let you out? You know, I honestly can't answer that question, Kate. And I mean, my wife's German and I don't think Germans could answer that question fully, but I think
00:25:46
Speaker
For the huge majority of them, there's no doubt that they went back very different people, that the indoctrination had been lifted to a very large degree. What do you think, Sebastian? When you read your grandfather's memoirs, and I'm sure you've read them more than once, did you get a sense that he changed as a person or that his time in Canada changed him at all?
00:26:13
Speaker
Yeah, first, at the beginning of the book, he believed in the Nazi ideology. But at the end, he thought, what am I doing? What am I doing here? What if I believed in? Do you have any thoughts about what made him change, do you think?
00:26:44
Speaker
Um, yeah, that would be, could be speculation. Yeah. But, um, what I said was, uh, was the case firstly believed in the ideology and at the end when he is about to, about to get free from the camp, he never believed in it that much anymore.
00:27:13
Speaker
Well Bernard, I'll wrap up with you too. Do you think that Ron's memoirs added to your understanding of the history or what can Ron's memoirs and his life experiences add to our understanding about this part of the history of Canada and Canada's involvement in the
Humanizing the Enemy Through Memoirs
00:27:32
Speaker
Second World War? What do you think?
00:27:34
Speaker
Yeah, it's a very powerful history in the way it humanizes a stereotype enemy. You know, when you see an individual, especially people who are outrageously young, the people we send off to fight wars.
00:27:55
Speaker
And, you know, one who is so engaging and observant and humorous. That was really good. And that was happening on the Canadian side as well. You see interviews with former guards.
00:28:07
Speaker
who really got quite close to the prisoners and recognized their humanity across the lines of the kind of dehumanization that happens in wartime, that has to happen in a way. And it's why it's always useful to go beyond the official sources and get to the human stories.
00:28:28
Speaker
That's a good point. Sebastian, do you have any final thoughts or things you'd like our listeners to think about or to know about your granddad before we wrap up? I will always remember him and when he holds the speech of my church graduation,
00:28:52
Speaker
when I was a full member of our church community. And it was a very long speech when I remember and I picture this moment and I'm very, very proud of him. Yeah. That's really nice.
00:29:20
Speaker
Thank you both for joining me. It's been a real pleasure having you on the podcast.
00:29:24
Speaker
The Stories Behind the History podcast is produced by Canada's History Society. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe to the podcast and leave us a rating or a review. It really helps others to find us. If you'd like to read more stories about Canadian history, why not subscribe to Canada's History magazine? Our beautifully illustrated glossy magazine will be delivered to your home six times a year, chock full of fascinating stories written by Canada's top historians and journalists.
00:29:54
Speaker
To subscribe to the magazine, go to Canada's History dot ca slash subscribe. I'm Kate Jamit. Thanks for joining me.